Rosebud 2026: A Conversation About Resolutions In the New Year

What is Rosebud

A number of years ago I started a New Years Resolution Plan called Rosebud. I heard about it on one of the travel podcasts that I follow. The process essentially looks like this:
Step 1: List Three Roses-
This is the stuff that I would consider the greatest strengths, successes or accomplishments of the past year, the stuff that has managed to blossom into a Rose.
Step 2: List One Thorn
This would reflect my greatest personal struggle of the past year.
Step 3: List Three Buds
Based on my “thorn”, this is a list of what I would like to “bud” into potential Roses in the coming year.
Step 4: Come up with a word for the year
Based on my three roses, this should be a single word that can help reflect the direction I want to head in the coming year, a single word that can give my year a theme or a recognizable focus and narrative.

Why Rosebud

I have been asked the question in the past, why three Roses but only one Thorn? It often goes unaware, but it tends to be much more diffciult to come up with roses than thorns. People, speaking in a fashion that I think has objective interest, tend to gravitate naturally towards a self critical and self depreciating view, whether we recognize it or not.

Equally difficult is learning how to speak about thorns in a way that imagines potential for growth. People also have a tendency to want to keep things in that self critical light, at least in part because to think otherwise leaves so much outside of our control. It’s kind of like that old piece of advice that says when you are in an interview for a new job and they ask you about your weaknesses, always give a weakness that you can do something about. More than this, forcing someone to give genuine thought to three Roses becomes a way of cultivating hope, even against our tendencies.

Another great part of the Rosebud system is also that it allows one to document their struggles and their growth year by year as a kind of working and interactive diary. You can build on the previous year and form an ongoing narrative that sets everything in conversation. This is not about resolutions persay, at least not in the traditional sense, it is about making space for introspection and observation and perspective. It gives someone a place to start from, not a script to follow or a to do list of accomplishments. And it allows one to not just make goals, but to examine what those goals are actual about, the why of our goals.

With that in mind…

Looking Back at Rosebud 2025

My three buds:

• Find a way to reoconfigure my current work situation into something with long term sustainability
• Take a first step in regaining agency and control, beginning with reclaiming this blogspace as an important part of my ability to process.
• Reclaim time and routine, beginning with getting rid of certain social media presences which have allowed me to escape the weight of my anxieties

Reflection:

It’s interesting to look back on where things were a year ago. There has been a lot of changes, especially where it concerns my work situaiton. In my summary of the three buds and my one thorn (which was the inability to control my anxiety) I noted that much of what was consuming me at the time was the question of my present working situation and an overall feeling of being out of control and locked in despair. A 4 hour a day position came with a lot of positives- being three blocks away from my work, a split shift which not only gave me the opportnity to be at home with the dogs during the day, but also to still retain a reasonable morning start time and a full evening during the weekdays. In some ways even the economic challenges had a slight upsight, showing that it was possible to survive on a fraction of my normal wage. And as the year went on in many respects I had adapted to the new pace of life and was making the most of things in regards to investing in one of my biggest projects: finally making some headway on a “writing my life story” project that felt stuck in the mud. But in the moment of penning last years Rosebud this economic position and pace of life had also opened up a spiral into a really bad head space.

Fast forward and I would find out last Spring that my present place of employment would be offering me a full time postion as Transportation Manager, which I have since accepted and which bumps me back up to full time work. And as mentioned, I likewise made some major headway in my project, having managed to at least push through a crude first draft, meaning I finally have something completed and which exists on page that I can start to work with and retool and reshape.

In other words, lots of positive changes that directly impact the buds above. My full time job still allows me to be home during the day for the dogs and to have my evenings. More so, this feels likely to be the last real job transition, save for some unforeseen issues, before I reach retirement age (yikes). On that same note, 2025 also saw us sitting down with the bank to refinance our mortgage at an amount that officially sees a mortgage free future quickly approaching. Which is to say, if I started the year with uncertainty I ended it with more stability than I’ve had in a while. And it should be said, I do genuinely love my job, which might be the most important factor.

My word for the year was reclaim, a word that was largely targetting my thorn, which related directly to reclaiming the many portions of my life from the anxieties that were holding it enslsaved. Some of these were forced and needed decisions, choices, actions that I knew I needed to navigate this past year which felt overly massive and overwhelming to me. While the job change and the ensuing change in pace did steal the early momentum I gained in reclaiming and keeping up this blogspace as a kind of ritual presence, cutting out most of the facebook groups that had been sucking me into that vortex of never ending argumentation that was largely enabling me to escape my anxieties helped to reformulate some of attention and energy into pushing through those needed decisions, choices and actions.

Looking Ahead: Rosebud 2026

Three Roses

1. Managed to leave and stay off of the facebook groups that had been eating up so much of my time and mental space.
2. Accepted and navigated a change in job
3. Faced some big fears and pressed back on some crippling anxiety

One Thorn:

1. The new pace of life has pushed me into a place where my brain has less time to get lost in those anxieties, but also less time for intentional management of my mental space. Figuring out how to stay aware of where I am at when my attention and world has become so narrowed is something I need to figure out.

Three Buds:

1. I  struggled big time with turning 40. Turning 50 in 2026 is bringing its own unique set of challenges mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I need to get ahead of that stuff and try and harness it in a direction that keeps me from spiralling. A big part of that feels like tapping into what motivates me on the broader level of meta narratives and beliefs, but also in the specifics of my participation in that story.
2. 50 feels ike the kind of moment to check something big off your list. If that’s the case, perhaps this is the year I finally do my trip to England, a bud that has shown up here year after year. Given that our current circumstance, having a pair of dogs that cannot go to the kennel and which require certain sacrifices that keep us bound to home I am not sure what that looks like or how that happens, but here’s to a potential bud
3. Shifting into more intentionality when it comes to my investments when it comes to my time and money and attention. I am thinking here mostly of this growing experience and feeling of turning 50 and being confronted with a world I no longer recognize or know. This year in particular has seen the most viceral and visible stripping away of one of my great loves- film. Something that has not just been a formative part of my life since I was a young kid, but which has been a massive part of my daily routine and conversations and relationships and passions. Thus this bud is about making space to grieve the many losses that the arrow of time represents and making and carving new space to preserve and recontextuaize why that stuff matters. This includes membership at my local arthouse, subscribing to services like Mubi instead of Netflix, donating and participating in the restoration of the local theater in Selkirk (my adopted second home town), shifting from Kindle to Kobo where my purchases can better support authors and books directly, continuing to support local bookstores, making direct connections with the people behind the art I value.

Word of the year: Motivation